How can you maintain Emotional Availability without losing yourself in the process?

by: Liza Jaine

As actors, we are constantly asked to be emotionally available, present, and grounded. And yet, there are many times when the characters we are asked to embody exhibit none of those attributes. How do we stay present and grounded when the character isn’t? How do we allow ourselves to be sensitive and open to our scene partner when the character is defensive and closed off? How do we honestly portray someone who is losing grip of their emotions while holding tight to our own?

It is difficult to draw that line within your mind and body. Bessel van der Kolk talks about this in his book, “The Body keeps the Score”. Our brains may know that we’re acting, but the body doesn’t. If we force it to go through grief and anger and love and hate, our body doesn’t know that it was all pretend. The body keeps score. (It’s a great book, by the way! You should pick it up!)

Jake Gyllenhaal has talked about this in interviews about his work in the film Nightcrawler. “When you have someone who has written something that’s so good, you’ll give everything to it ‘cause it’s so rare to find. And so I was just deeply devoted to that character and that story, and yeah, the side effects of it, it takes a bit of time to shake it off.”

So what can we do? Are the only choices to either keep the feelings superficial and give an affected performance or bring honesty and truth to the role and live with scars we did nothing to earn?

Guess what. There’s another option.

Just like we practice emotional availability and sense memory and personalization, we need to also practice emotional healing. We need to remember to spend as much time if not more cooling down as we did warming up. We have to come back to our bodies and remind ourselves that we are ok…that we are safe. This allows the mind to release the stress we built for our character…a stress that isn’t ours and can easily be discarded.

So the next time you’re working on a scene and finding the emotional stakes, remember to first take stock of where you are mentally in your own life. Where are your points of stress? Acclimate yourself to the truth you’ve brought into the room with you. Then, and only then, can you attach a character. Once you’ve done the work for the day, find a quiet spot and rediscover your center, that person you were when you walked in the door. Shed the foreign personality and trauma like the costume you’ve already removed and leave it at work.

Being human is hard enough. We don’t need to make it harder by carrying the baggage of every character we portray. Leave all of it behind. The cool part, is that once you can systematically separate from the character, you can reattach yourself just as easily—slipping in and out with no lasting wounds or scars.

Stay healthy, friends!